1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to communication receivers having voice storage capability, and more particularly to a paging receiver providing user controllable message retrieval.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Communication receivers which provide the capability for digitizing and storing voice messages have become available with the availability of large, low cost semiconductor memories. One such receiver having voice storage capability can store one sixteen second, or two eight second digitized voice messages utilizing a 256 kilobit CMOS dynamic random access memory (DRAM), or one sixty-four second, or four sixteen second digitized voice messages with a one megabit CMOS DRAM. Digitized voice messages which have been stored were recalled from memory by the user by depressing a "play" button, which initiated the playback of the most recently received message. To review any other stored voice messages, the user was required to repeatedly depress the "play" button while the previous message was being replayed. In this manner, each stored voice message was recalled from memory in the reverse order of the sequence in which the messages were received, i.e. the most recently received message was always replayed first followed in order by the other stored voice messages. To review a stored voice message a second time, the entire sequence of stepping through the messages had to be repeated by the user until the desired message was selected. While the operational sequence described had been suitable for reviewing up to four stored voice messages, there is a need to provide better methods for accessing and retrieving stored voice messages as the number of voice messages stored is increased and as the length of the stored voice messages is increased. In addition, in most instances, only a portion of the stored voice message may contain the information which is required by the user to be replayed at a later time.
Consequently, there is a need by the user to rapidly locate both a particular stored voice message and the desired message portion for which replay is required. In this regard, there is a need to be able to insert certain information into the digitized stored voice message which can be used to rapidly locate the desired message portion, without having to review the entire message on replay at a later time.